Online retail giant Amazon will create more than 1,600 jobs after being given permission to build on the former site of a Jaguar car production unit.
Despite 106 letters of objection, Coventry City Council gave the go-ahead to a £120m development the size of 18 football pitches.
The plans are for a 15-metre-high, 430,000 sq ft warehouse with 127 HGV spaces and parking for 700 cars.
Jim O’Boyle, the councillor in charge of development in Coventry, told the BBC the city could not afford to turn down more than a thousand jobs.
He added the investment would see the “biggest influx of jobs into the city in one fell swoop in well over a decade”.
A number of opponents to the development were against goods “being shipped” from overseas rather than being manufactured on site.
The site, on Browns Lane in Coventry, is scheduled to be in operation by next year.
Amazon also plans to open a new fulfilment centre in Daventry, Northamptonshire in 2017.